The Insiders
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Oct
24
VFM intro, or, how complicated can counting be?
Posted by: Neal Yonson | October 24, 2007 | 11 Comments
Voter Funded Media, the contest that saw the birth of this and other (now defunct) charming student publications, is soon to be re-launched for this year. Yay! The media-reform project is meant to improve media culture, and by extension democracy in general. This is theoretically accomplished by making media into a public good: you reward media by votes, from a public fund, that voters pay into. In our case, that means that when you vote in AMS elections, you’ll also have a ballot for your favorite elections-media group, and prizes will be allocated accordingly. Also, our “voter funding” is actually being proffered (to the tune of $8000) by VFM-originator Mark Latham, not a public fee.
Last year the contest had many successes and some failures. This year there are some changes afoot. Here’s an intro to a few features of the contest:
- Contestants – VFM is open to both established media, and new media. So, for example, last year the established Arts undergrad paper, The Underground, entered the contest and won. Tim and Gina started this blog from scratch, and also did a great job. As the contest matures, and more “new” media sources stick around and get established, the name-recognition advantage for established groups will decrease. The Ubyssey, our official student newspaper, didn’t enter last year, to leave the field more open for new groups. They even paid the entrance fee for a bunch of new media groups.
- Start time – This year, the contest will be launching several months before the AMS election campaign begins. The ultimate intent of VFM is to establish permanent, healthy media choices, not just during elections time. This will give media that start early a chance to establish credibility and a reader base. Last year, the contest was pretty rushed, due to last-minute planning and approval at the AMS.
- Formats – Contestants can use a wide range of media formats: internet-based, paper-based, magazine-based, whatever. The mix is pretty fun.
- Media strategies – Last year, a fair number of styles surfaced through the contest. There were some joke entries, ranging from great (Radical Beer tribune) to lame (Cameron Funnell). There were more serious, issue-focused entries like The Knoll and this blog. There were some informative, but unenlightening elections newspapers like Election Erection and The Underground. And there was of course, the Duncan-Kearny group that did no media coverage whatsoever, but got people to vote for them based purely on personal popularity.
- Allocating prizes – At the simplest level, prizes are allocated on the basis of voter’s preference. Theoretically, they reward the media that best served them. It gets more complicated though: this year’s VFM committee has decided upon a rather complex, unintuitive voting system for the contest, which they claim will minimize the impact of “strategic” votes and narrow-appeal media groups. The system involves each voter weighing the contestants by giving them more or less theoretical money. Then some percentile (not the mean) of the allocations determines how the prize pot is “sliced”. Don’t worry, a primer on this later.
Last year, VFM sparked some really decent debate. The candidates had to learn alot, and know the issues. It established a lively discourse during election time that was great to be part of. The new media that popped up was exciting and fresh. However, VFM didn’t increase overall voter turnout, which is still mired at about 10%. Arguably, the best media contestants did not win. And FVM took up alot of candidates’ time, preventing them from pursuing more traditional campaigning methods and getting out the vote. The good thing about VFM though, is that it improves with maturity: with more years, the contest will have more momentum to begin with, and the quality of contestants will be progressively pushed up leaving little room of get-rich-quick punks and deadbeat hacks.
We’ll see how things go this year. UBC Insiders’ awesome VFM roster is being established as we speak, so stay tuned. Here’s to media! *clink*
FYI: The VFM contest is hiring an administrator. This person would be reporting to the AMS Elections Administrator, Brian Peiovesan, and they’re offering 750 bucks. The job posting is found HERE, for those interested.
A chat I had with Mark Latham, and revelations thereof, can be found HERE
Comments
11 Comments so far
I find it really strange that VFM didn’t increase voter turnout. Any further thoughts on that Maayan?
The goal of VFM was not increase turnout, it was to increase levels of information. We may not have had more voters, but hopefully the people who did choose to vote were significantly more informed than previously.
-Steph Ryan
bahaha I hope the Duncan-Kearney Media Group runs again. It really sends out a strong message. I am not really sure what the message is – but it’s definitely strong.
You know what? I hope they do too. But not becoause of any “message” (like you, I cannot think of any they may have imbued). That way, Mike Duncan woudn’t be able to run for AMS president, and save us all from a crazy liability.
Honestly, the VFM should be able to both increase voters’ information on the candidates and AMS as well as increasing voter turnout. If not, then VFM cannot be called a success. Think about it, Steph,the whole intention of the VFM is to improve democracy in UBC.
Not that I am saying VFM sucks, but if only 10% people vote, no matter how informed they are, the democracy still sucks. Having said that, I still hope to see VFM is actually doing its job. Otherwise, it is really not such a good idea to spend 8000 dollars.
I knew that the goal of VFM was to scrutinize the candidates and expose the “get-rich-quick punks” and “deadbeat hacks” (as Maayan puts it). I was hoping, however, that a side benefit would be increased voter turnout and I think it is disappointing that this wasn’t the case. Clearly a lot needs to be done to encourage students to vote and I see VFM playing a considerable role in that effort.
One of the original goals of vfm was to increase voter turnout. I don’t think it’s fair not to acknowledge that, and it doesn’t mean that the project doesn’t still have value absent the achievement of that particular goal.
I think we seriously need to look at other causes about why voter turnout sucks. Maybe the AMS doesn’t bring up enough salient issues. Maybe we’re just not doing a very good job. Or maybe it’s that we’ve gotten rid of slates and have made it exponentially harder for candidates to collaborate, share resources, and campaign on a greater scale, thus forcing students to learn that an election is happening, whether they want to know or not. VFM assumes that students are going to voluntarily pick up a newspaper or go to a blog and read it. Anthony Downs’ theory of rational ignorance would tell us that unless they’re someone who already figures it’s worth their time to vote, they’re pretty unlikly to go out of their way to find out about an election they fully don’t intend to vote in.
And to clarify, one of the main reasons the original VFM Committee said that increasing voter turnout was an original goal is because we needed to pass our project through Council. The objective of Mark Latham’s original “TurboDemocracy” was never to increase turnout.
oops, sorry I forgot to sign off.
-Steph
There is absolue *zero* evidence in support of the contention that slates had higher voter turnout.
I want slates to come back. Long live the RBF!